New Musical premieres

Along with Emily Clare Thomp­son, my col­lab­o­ra­tor, I attended the pre­miere of our newest musi­cal, A Knight at the Round Table, on March 13, 2014. Emily not only writes book and lyrics, she also directed the entire pro­duc­tion. It was per­formed at Cen­tral School in East Hanover, NJ, with a cast of tal­ented 5^th Graders.

The show starts in a modern-day mid­dle school, where young Gwen is inspired by the King Arthur leg­end and wants to learn more. As she researches the dif­fer­ent sto­ries and shares with her friends, she slowly draws their inter­est to the Arthurian world, too. When she and her class­mates read dif­fer­ent books, the stage trans­forms into the world of King Arthur, and the leg­end of King Arthur is told in flash­backs. Soon, Gwen and her fel­low stu­dents begin to see par­al­lels between the Arthurian leg­end and their own lives. Could the return of the age of Camelot be close at hand?

We asked so much from our tal­ented group of young stu­dents! Emily and I feel this show is our most ambi­tious work yet. We started work on this in early Decem­ber, and we decided to up the ante; we wrote a more com­plex score and employed more stag­ing effects than usual. And by unfor­tu­nate coin­ci­dence, this hap­pened to be the snowiest win­ter in years! So many days of school were can­celed for inclement weather, mean­ing lost rehearsals. Stu­dents made up the time by rehears­ing on week­ends and dur­ing lunch and recess. Given all of these hin­drances, it’s a minor mir­a­cle the kids pulled off such great per­for­mances, with rich, thought­ful characterizations.

Here are a dozen pic­tures from the pro­duc­tion; click the image to enlarge.

The teacher drones “On and On and On.”

Gwen researches King Arthur as the scene trans­forms to medieval mimes

The vil­lagers in medieval times

Mer­lin and the Lady of the Lake con­vince Lady Igraine she must give up the baby Arthur

Mer­lin watches the young Arthur retrieve the sword Excalibur

Lady Igraine, Lady of the Lake, and Mer­lin crown the new king

Gwen reads with Bernard, while the class­mates look on

King Arthur explains “The Code of Chivalry” to his knights

“Have a Lit­tle Faith”–Marvin gets his magic back

Old and new worlds join; is Bernard the new king?

Bows

Sword­play pos­ing between Arthur and Bernard, after the show